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Monday, 28 April 2014

Dragon and Girl: Ready to Lead Up, and Metropolis Beginnings

Hi all! Long time no write. Darn this having to work for a living thing, it sure does get in the way of my glass hobby!

I've been able to get into the glass studio sporadically on weekends, and have finally finished the last layers of paint and enamel on my Dragon and Girl piece. Now it's ready to be leaded up, and then maybe someone will want to buy it (ha ha.) Anyone want to buy some stained glass? (wheedle)

I used amber and then ruby red enamel on the dragon, which came out a nice kind of bronze colour over the brown paint. The little girl's hair is amber enamel, and her flowers are blue, amber, and ruby red enamel.

And now on to my new piece. It's inspired by the classic 1927 ur-science fiction film "Metropolis" and its iconic robot poster. Here's the poster:

I started with smooth amber Cathedral glass. The piece is 1 meter tall (a little over 3 feet) and 50 cm wide. This will be the biggest piece I've ever done, so wish me luck!

Here's the face, which I started last weekend. The stripey look in the background is the camera catching the light table's lights strobing (it happens too fast for the eye to see, but the camera catches it.) It's propped up on 3 pieces of blu-tack. Also pictured: a little bit of my badger brush!

It's not exactly true to the poster, it's kind of my own take on it. The actual glass piece is a lot taller - the top pieces (where it's going to have the "Metropolis" lettering) were all in the kiln being fired when I took these pictures. I do intend to include all of the buildings in the background as well as the lettering at the top. It will all be done in paint, and I intend to keep the piece a monochrome, sepia colour like the poster.

This is a kind of different subject for a stained glass piece, I know. I was talking with The Scotsman about it, and came to the conclusion that iconic film imagery seems to fire me up (no pun intended, ha!) a lot more than Biblical stories. No offense to the Bible, but Bible stories and characters have been done in glass for millennia now!

The Metropolis robot was so amazing and ahead of its time, and led to so many other famous film robots (C-3PO, I'm looking at you!) that I feel it has the same kind of resonance for me as images of the Archangel Gabriel might have had to people in Medieval times. Stained glass has always been about using images to tell stories, and I'm following that tradition - telling stories that I find interesting.

There's still a huge amount of work to be done on this piece, but I'm pretty pleased with the way it's coming along. I hope it turns out!